Wednesday, May 13, 2009

Participatory Media Rights in Education Now!

I get sick to my stomach every time I hear of a school banning Twitter. I feel even worse for teachers and students who have never had the opportunity to use Twitter in the classroom.

I've spent the past week live blogging what I think are very successful uses of Twitter in class. I dare any administrator to visit my Twitter-enhanced Latin classes and then tell me social media has no place in a school building.

I wish I were more eloquent. If I were, I would stand up and say: enough with this silliness! What would we call you if you banned books in school? What would we call you if you banned pens and pencils? What would we call you if you taped students' mouths shut and banned speech?

Because that's what you should be called for banning Twitter and social media.

Twitter is a source of vast information. Twitter is a source of shared expressions. Twitter is a place for freedom of speech and collaboration between intellects. In the best sense of the word, it is the new dialectic.

Sure, Twitter can be used to store provocative and even malicious ideas. But library shelves are filled with tons of provocative and even malicious ideas, yet you would not dare close a school library. Sure, Twitter can be a place filled with gossip and trivial conversation, but so is your student lunchroom and so is your teachers' lounge. Sure, Twitter can be a place full of vulgar language and half-baked ideas, but is anyone under the illusion that this is not merely the reflection of society at large?

Twitter is what you make it. And for hundreds, if not thousands of teachers, Twitter has been the source of the most inspiring and important professional development they've ever had.

And all it cost you was the price of Internet access and a wireless hub.

We teachers demand participatory media rights in education now! Unblock Twitter, unblock Skype, unblock YouTube. If you are afraid of what the students and teachers might do with this media access, imagine what they might do without it. Whether you happen to like it or not, we teachers are responsible professionals who are dying for the truth in professional development. And whether you like it or not, your students must learn to be responsible within the context of this Digital Age which is upon us. To deny the use of social and participatory media now is to doom our culture and to foster a generation of frustrated educators and a generation of students who see the democratic application of technology as nothing more than a taboo.

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Teach Paperless: Now!

TeachPaperless began in February 2009 as a blog detailing the experiences of one teacher in a paperless classroom. It has grown to be something much more than that. In January 2011, TeachPaperless became a collaboratively written blog dedicated to conversation and commentary about the intertwined worlds of digital technology, new media, and education.

Buzz Paperless

TeachPaperless was noted as a Twitterer worth ReTweeting by Education Week's Digital Education blog. Also in Ed Week: "Shelly Blake-Plock has had some really intriguing posts already this year and I'm already behind. Considering he published 639 entries on his TeachPaperless blog in 2009 it's going to be hard to keep up, but well worth the try."

“When I originally contacted Shelley last week to inquire as to whether or not he would be willing to talk to my staff, he jumped right in, and he didn’t disappoint. What impressed me most about him as I listened to him describe his practice was his clear vision of what it meant for his students to function in a classroom that he designed: it was about them learning. He truly designed the environment with their learning–their unbridled learning–in mind. His decision was not a secretarial one, but rather came from a desire to push students to take control of information gathering, processing, and creating.” – Chalkdust 101

TeachPaperless was named one of the 'Top 25 Blogs for Educators' byWorld Wide Learn.

"I think you have some great ideas for teachers, and as we do professional development around the state of Maryland, we will point teachers to your blog." Debbie Vickers of Thinkport.org a partnership between Maryland Public Television and Johns Hopkins University's Center for Technology in Education

"The invention of the computer promised to lead us to a paperless society but has failed to deliver on that promise... until now, perhaps?" TeachPaperless was featured by Mid-continent Research for Education and Learning as an Everyday Innovation

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Photo Credit: MJ Wojewodzki; a portion of a painted wall in the Villa of the Mysteries, Pompeii [2006]